I moved a few months ago to a new place and for some time I had placed my hi-fi speakers (vintage 3-way classic speakers) just on the floor. I have now placed them on shelves around 1.4 meters high and, maybe it's subjective silliness but I would swear that it sounds better (even if I have to keep the volume moderate because of my pain-in-the-ass neighbours )

When placing speakers you have to think about the surfaces the sound waves will reflect off. These reflections can add or subtract from the sound coming out of the speaker and that will affect what you hear. However, low frequency sound has very long wavelengths so the effect of reflections is negligible. For example a 20Hz note has a wavelength of 17.17m (19yds), so no surface in a typical living room is going to be far enough away to cause any problems. This means you can put a sub just about anywhere. However at 200Hz the wavelength is only 1.7m, so now reflections do cause a problem, and the most obvious surface for reflecting is the floor, so lift your speakers off the floor and they'll sound less "chesty".

. For example a 20Hz note has a wavelength of 17.17m (19yds), so no surface in a typical living room is going to be far enough away to cause any problems. This means you can put a sub just about anywhere.

This sounds convincing, yet I've heard time and again the opposite - that subwoofer placement is critical.

. For example a 20Hz note has a wavelength of 17.17m (19yds), so no surface in a typical living room is going to be far enough away to cause any problems. This means you can put a sub just about anywhere.

This sounds convincing, yet I've heard time and again the opposite - that subwoofer placement is critical.

I was talking specifically about reflections off hard surfaces in regard to the previous question of height above the floor and the colouration of the sound . Where you place a sub does not affect the colour of the sound (you cannot change the tone of a sub by moving it around a room). However, corner placement can have an effect of amplifying the sound coming out of a sub but this is purely a loudness thing that is no different to turning up the signal levels on the speaker, it does not affect the colouration of the sound - it doesn't sound more bass-ey, it just sounds louder overall. Other than that it does not mater where a sub goes, we cannot determine directionality of low frequency sound (because the average human's ears are only 0.15m apart), which is why you only have/need one monaural subwoofer in any setup and why to doesn't matter where it goes.

I used to run a 2.1 setup and placed the sub all over the room, never made a difference to me. I have since gone to a straight up 2.0 setup....I often found myself just not enjoying all that low-end with the sub.

Definitely a sub guy. I love the dramatic thumping bass to vibrate my bones as well as my walls. I don't set my twin sub speaker amp too high though. It take away from the music.
I've always felt that people who saturate their music with bass have an unrefined ear for music. You simply don't get the whole picture if you do that. :)

After i put a sub in my main set up and realized how much fuller/better it sounded than before, i eventually put a sub in every system of the house. It's a no-brainer.

And if you can hear the sub "working," you need to re-adjust your levels. You may need to adjust your sub levels with different recordings while geting used to your new sub. Best to be as minimal with your sub as possible, but still get the benefits of using one. It takes a while to get it just right....

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